"Go, grievous gales, your heads that heave,
Ye foam-flaked furies of the wasty deep.
Ye loud-tongued Tritons, wind and wave.
Go fan my love where she doth sleep,
And tell her, tell her in her ear
Her Corydon sits sighing here.
"The tempest stalks the stormy sea,
The lightning leaps with lurid light,
The glad gull calls from lea to lea,
The whistling whirlwind fills the night;
Bears each a message to my love,
Whose stony heart I faint to move."
"'Tis too short," said the maiden, "we shall be friends, I hope, long
enough to hear more of it."
"Meanwhile, Sir Poet," said Ludar, who chafed at these civilities, "go
forward again, and keep the watch. Call if you spy aught, and keep your
eyes well open."
Fortune favoured us that day, as she had handled us roughly in the days
before. The wind held good, and filled our slender canvas. The pilot's
charts deceived not; nor did friend or enemy stand across our path.
Before night we had swept round the rock and found the channel of the
Forth, up which, on a favouring tide, we dropped quietly that evening;
and at nightfall let go our anchor with grateful hearts, albeit weary
bodies, in Leith Roads, where for a season the _Misericorde_ and we had
rest from our labours.